Friday Feature

In celebration of Africa Day on 25 May, this month’s
Friday Feature will profile prominent heads of state, who are not only members of the African Union but also liberation heroes or activists in their own right First on the list is President Ellen Johnson
Sirleaf of Liberia.

Born in Liberia in 1938, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was
schooled in the United States before serving in the government of her native
Liberia. A military coup in 1980 sent her into exile, but she returned in 1985
to speak out against the military regime. She was forced to briefly leave the
country again. When she won the 2005 election, Johnson Sirleaf became the first
female elected head of state in Africa. In 2011, she was one of a trio of women
to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Ellen Johnson
Sirleaf was born on October 29, 1938, in Monrovia, Liberia. A graduate of the
College of West Africa at Monrovia, she went on to receive her bachelor's
degree in accounting from the Madison Business College in Madison, Wisconsin, a
degree in economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Master of
Public Administration degree from Harvard University.

After returning to Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf served as assistant
minister of Finance in President William Tolbert's administration. In 1980,
Tolbert was overthrown and killed by army sergeant Samuel Doe, who represented
the Krahn ethnic group. Johnson Sirleaf went into exile in Nairobi, Kenya, as
well as in the United States, where she worked as an executive in the
international banking community.

In 1985, Johnson Sirleaf returned to Liberia and
ran for a seat in the Senate, but when she spoke out against Doe's military
regime, she was sentenced to 10 years in prison. She served a partial sentence
before moving to Washington, D.C. When she returned to her native country for a
third time in 1997, it was as an economist, working for the World Bank and Citibank
in Africa.

After supporting Charles Taylor's bloody rebellion against President
Samuel Doe in 1990, Johnson Sirleaf ran unsuccessfully against Taylor in the
1997 presidential election. Taylor subsequently charged Johnson Sirleaf with
treason. In 2005, after campaigning for the removal of President Taylor,
Johnson Sirleaf took over as leader of the Unity Party. That year, promising
economic development and an end to corruption and civil war, she was elected to
the Liberian presidency. When she was inaugurated in 2006, Johnson Sirleaf, or
the "Iron Lady," as she was also known, became the world's first
elected black female president and Africa's first elected female head of state.

Despite Charles Taylor's large number of followers
in Liberian government, including his son-in-law and estranged wife, President
Johnson Sirleaf submitted an official request to Nigeria for Taylor's
extradition in 2006. Five years later, she shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize
with Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman, awarded "for their nonviolent
struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation
in peace-building work."

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has four sons and six
grandchildren, some of whom live in Atlanta, Georgia.